All That Remains exhibition, Paris

Of the myriad existential concerns alive in our collective consciousness, none is more poignant or essential than the nature, flow and measurement of time. We fret over the brevity of human life, we devise technologies to help us spend our days more efficiently, we abhor anything deemed a 'waste' of time, and we grapple relentlessly with the paramount uncertainty of how long we might have left.

Click here to see pictures from the exhibition.

In All That Remains, a new exhibition at Schirman & de Beauce in Paris, four separate artists - Richard Gilligan, Sam Griffin, Thomas Lock, and Vicki Thornton - explore the meaning and nature of time through photography, drawing, and film. Their work touches on ideas of nostalgia, being, absence, permanence, and the fragility of life.

Gilligan's photographs of an empty and dilapidated commune building near Brussels, Griffin's geometric and architectural drawings, Lock's visual and sonic installations shot against the backdrop of Coney Island, and Thornton's manipulated 16mm film compositions, each contemplate time as a visual language.

For the viewer it is an exercise in sensory exploration of a subject that can consume a great deal of formal philosophical thought but which features less often in the realm of visual arts. The point here is not to answer a question but rather to provoke a cognitive response - a process more personally enlightening, potentially, than volumes of textbooks and treatises.

25 March 2008 | Art